[iPhone Apps] Path: Too much openness is not desirable! Communicate with close friends

Are you using a social networking service (SNS)? If not, the biggest reason might be because it leaves you too open to too many people. Here a recommendable solution: Path, a restrictive SNS that can be used when you want to communicate only with close friends while protecting your privacy.

When you hear the word SNS, the first thing that comes to mind might be “openness,” represented by Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is more of a type of social media that makes information flow with its complete openness, and Facebook is more of a type of SNS that enables people to share details of their lives.

However, both services suffer from the same problem: excessive openness. Openness is an important part of communication, but it can spread your personal information and details of your life not only to your family and friends but also to friends of your friends and even strangers. Moreover, if you add your boss, clients, or teachers or professors to your friend list, it will be very hard to talk freely about your life and thoughts. This has been a major drawback of these services.

If you’re resisting SNS because of this excessive exposure, you might want to look at Path, which has been consistently popular. It doesn’t require a lot of information except for the basics such as your e-mail address and birthdate. Unlike Facebook, people you don’t know cannot read your comments. Because there’s no webpage of your account, your comments cannot be retrieved, either. Because you don’t have to add people who are not very close to you, it can be a very personal space for yourself to share details of your private life. You could say that Path is a safety zone for your privacy.

Path has made steady progress with constant updates for about a year. Based on a simple, intuitive user interface, it has all necessary functions. Your friends’ activities are basically updated on one timeline, and everyone can have their own spaces called paths. It is similar to the News Feed and Wall of Facebook. By clicking a button, you can easily share what’s happening in your life, such as the people you are hanging out with now, places where you are now, music that you’re listening to now, and things that your want to talk about now. It also has fascinating functions of its own, such as “sleep” and “emoticon.”

Focusing on protection of privacy and user experience, Path has consistently been one of the most popular of the several similar services that have become available during the SNS boom. The various intuitive, interesting functions of Path will be introduced in the next article. If you are skeptical about the use of SNS itself, you don’t have to try it. However, if you’re only resisting SNS because of excessive exposure, it may be a good idea to create your private network through Path. Path supports Korean-language use and can be downloaded from Korean and U.S. app stores for free.